Devotionals

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Did God Cry Daddy?
©
by

Stephen A. Peterson

Read: Hebrews 4:15

For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Hebrews 4:15 (NIV)

Several kindergarten aged girls, mine and my neighbors, were playing outside in our backyard when I heard them screaming out loud at each other then at my five year old daughter: “Get outta here! We don’t wanna play with you anymore!”

Juanita came running to me clinging to my leg as she cried. Within seconds, I picked her up to hold her close when she asked still sobbing; “Daddy, does God cry?”

At the time, I thought to myself, “What an unusual question for a five year old to ask until I came to realize what she actually meant. That is: “Does God know hurt? Did He ever have someone hurt His feelings so much that He would have cried?”

As I thought of something and how to respond to my crying daughter, I imagined how God’s heart must have cried over the millennia having to deal with humankind. Then I remembered a verse in the Bible that never meant much to me. I knew it was the shortest verse: “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35—NIV).

Jesus, Our Lord who is God shed tears! Jesus came face to face with and felt hunger, pain, sickness, rejection, hatred, exhaustion, temptation…and everything He experienced except to sin. So He has been there and knows what it is like.

“Yes, Juanita,” I responded to my daughter who looked up to me with her beautiful brown eyes, “God cries, too!”

“Okay,” she answered with a smile then left my protection then went back outside to face her friends and the world once again.

Like my daughter, it is comforting to know that we can go before our God with the knowledge that we can relate with Him. That the God she, me and you worship, honor and make an example of knows our pain and can be approached in confidence.

Prayer: Jesus, thank You for coming among us and allowing Yourself to experience everything we did but sin. Thank You also that you are not a remote God so that we may run to You and be comforted at any time—day or night.

Thought for the Day: Let us run to the Lord as our refuge and strength.

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